Hindeloopen Frisian
Encyclopedia
Hindeloopen Frisian is the archaic Frisian dialect
of the small port city of Hindeloopen
on the west coast of the Dutch province of Friesland
. It has preserved much Old Frisian
pronunciation and vocabulary. It is still spoken by some 300 people, almost of all of them elderly, and that number is decreasing.
had had a dialect that was very similar to Hindeloopen.
There are also a few lexical differences, such as siie instead of naaie (to sew), tät instead of happe (a child’s word for “horse”) and öie instead of sipel (onion). The dialect’s vocabulary preserves many more words from Old Frisian that are no longer used elsewhere.
The differences in pronunciation and vocabulary between Hindeloopen Frisian and Standard Frisian are so big that mutual intelligibility is difficult. However, Hindeloopen Frisian has gradually become more like standard Frisian due to increasing contact with speakers of other dialects.
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
of the small port city of Hindeloopen
Hindeloopen
-External links:* Museum Hindeloopen: Hindelooper schilderkunst, klederdracht, stads- en scheepvaarthistorie.*...
on the west coast of the Dutch province of Friesland
Friesland
Friesland is a province in the north of the Netherlands and part of the ancient region of Frisia.Until the end of 1996, the province bore Friesland as its official name. In 1997 this Dutch name lost its official status to the Frisian Fryslân...
. It has preserved much Old Frisian
Old Frisian
Old Frisian is a West Germanic language spoken between the 8th and 16th centuries in the area between the Rhine and Weser on the European North Sea coast. The Frisian settlers on the coast of South Jutland also spoke Old Frisian but no medieval texts of this area are known...
pronunciation and vocabulary. It is still spoken by some 300 people, almost of all of them elderly, and that number is decreasing.
Written language
Hindeloopen Frisian has been written since the 17th century. In 1981, the Frisian Academy published a dictionary of the dialect.Development
Due to its position on a peninsula, Hindeloopen was very isolated from the mainland until the 20th century and had for centuries more contact with the coastal cities in Holland on the other side of the South Sea. Because of this, Hindeloopen Frisian underwent greater influence from Hollandic speech than the other dialects of Frisian. The location of Hindeloopen is, however, not a complete explanation for the dialect: until about 1800, KoudumKoudum
Koudum is a village in Friesland, The Netherlands. It is the seat of the Gemeente of Nijefurd. The population is 2,753 . There is a restored windmill in the village, De Vlijt....
had had a dialect that was very similar to Hindeloopen.
Differences with Standard Frisian
- In Hindeloopen Frisian, the l in the trigraphs âld and âlt is not silent, as it is in Standard Frisian, and the vowel is longer.
- The Standard Frisian “tsj” is reduced to “tj” or “s”; for example, tjian for the standard tsjin (against) and serke for the standard tsjerke (church).
- The digraph ae is still used instead of the modern aa.
- The standard "ú" is written "uu".
- Non-standard letters used: ä, ö, è and ò.
There are also a few lexical differences, such as siie instead of naaie (to sew), tät instead of happe (a child’s word for “horse”) and öie instead of sipel (onion). The dialect’s vocabulary preserves many more words from Old Frisian that are no longer used elsewhere.
The differences in pronunciation and vocabulary between Hindeloopen Frisian and Standard Frisian are so big that mutual intelligibility is difficult. However, Hindeloopen Frisian has gradually become more like standard Frisian due to increasing contact with speakers of other dialects.